Nintendo has long championed backward compatibility--but at a price. For example, Nintendo Switch Online subscribers gain access to classic SNES and NES games, while Expansion Pack subscribers gain access to classic N64 titles. And because Nintendo has so successfully monetized its back catalog, it especially hates emulation and ROM sites.

Nintendo has put many illegal ROM distribution sites out of business over the years, and it looks like we can add another name to the list. The French site 1fichier.com is offline and its owner has been ordered to pay nearly €500,000 after the Paris Court of Appeals ruled it had been illegally distributing copyrighted Nintendo works.

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The court has ordered Dstorage, the owner and operator of 1fichier.com, to pay Nintendo €442,750 in damages and €25,000 to cover its legal fees. The ruling was handed out after a similar ruling was made by the French Judicial Court back in May 2021. The site was proven to both host and distribute pirated copies of Nintendo games.

"Nintendo is pleased with the decision of the Paris Court of Appeals, as it again sends a clear message that in refusing to remove or withdraw access to unauthorized copies of video games despite prior notification, sharehosting services such as Dstorage (1fichier) are liable under French law and must remove or block access to such content and may be liable to pay compensation to those rights holders whose intellectual property rights have been infringed," wrote Nintendo in an official statement (via Games Industry.biz).

"The Court’s finding of liability against Dstorage is significant not only for Nintendo, but also for the entire games industry. It will prevent sharehosters like 1Fichier from claiming that a prior decision from a court will be needed before pirated content has to be taken down, and additionally the Court decision confirms what rights holders have to give notice of when claiming that notified content infringes copyright or trademark rights."

Nintendo has a long history of suing ROM and emulator site operators. Back in 2018, the owners of LoveROMs.com and LoveRETRO.co agreed to pay $12 million in damages for hosting and distributing Nintendo games. In 2021, RomUniverse was ordered to pay $2.1 million in damages after losing its court battle in California to Nintendo's lawyers. RomUniverse was also slapped with a permanent injunction, taking the site offline forever.

And it's not just ROM sites that Nintendo goes after. The Mario maker fiercely defends its copyrights even from seemingly minor infractions. Most recently, Nintendo issued several DMCA takedowns to a YouTuber who recently announced a multiplayer mod for Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The mod still requires legal ownership of Breath of the Wild, but Nintendon’t care.

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